System Tray Popup

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by Stephen >> Fri, 10 Jun 2005 2:51:09 GMT

Hi,
We are trying to implement a popup little window that comes up from the system tray - similar to many other applications such as Instant Messenger or Skype when someone comes on line.

However it can not just be a little balloon help - I need the users to be able to interact with the window.
Eg, it may come up saying "You have not signed off on this report yet", and it will give a number of options (checkboxes) for what the user can do.

The problem I have is how to make this little window stay on top, until it is actioned, without being modal.

If they are busy say typing in text, then I don;t want the textbox to loose focus when this new little popup appears. That would get really annoying. I just want it to stay on top, down in the bottom left corner until it is actioned. So it can not be modal.
If it is non-modal then it will just go to the back and not be seen - I need it to stay on top.

Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
Stephen

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by Patwos >> Fri, 10 Jun 2005 4:34:05 GMT

The method Form::alwaysOnTop( onTop : Boolean ) may help you to achieve the desired result.

Hope that helps,
Pat.

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by Stephen >> Mon, 13 Jun 2005 4:40:07 GMT

Works great - hadn't spotted that as a method, Thanks.
What about making it so it doesn't show in the task bar?

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by Patwos >> Mon, 13 Jun 2005 8:14:25 GMT

You can get it to not show in the task bar using the following options:

1) Set border to none
2) Turn off all Minimise/Maximise/ControlBox settings
3) Set the form caption to null
4) Use setFormParent to parent the form to say your main MDI Frame

The form will now display with no Task Bar entry - or at least it did in my test on the WinXP OS. Using setFormParent may of course have some undesired side-effects such as the popup form "minimising" when the main MDI Frame is minimised.

You could also utilise a Windows API call to set the window style for this popup form to a toolbar window, which will also prevent it from appearing on the Task Bar. I don't have that API call handy currently but I believe it was mentioned previously on these newsgroups so a search may find it.

Hope that helps,
Pat.

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by Patwos >> Mon, 13 Jun 2005 8:27:12 GMT

You might also want to check the following posting in the jade_tech_tip_techniques News Group:

"stopping a window from appearing in the taskbar"

Hope that helps,
Pat.